Controversy Sells ?

Well I wonder if that's a question. But it came up again in class during the discussion of ethics at workplace . The professor referred to increasing reporting of interpersonal abuse in the media as proof of its increasing clutches on our society.

I think the reality is different. With survival pressures heating up in all sectors. Organizations are thinking of ways to sustain and grow their market share. Strategies like innovative advertising, new products, added functionalities etc do not work in case of newspapers websites and other such means of communication. For a newspaper TOI (Times of India) defied the assumption that you can not anything innovative to it by 'giving readers what they want'. (Check out a previous post here).It today is the market leader. If I look around, the same phenomenon exists everywhere. Talk of websites like Indiatimes. All those who have learnt that you can't sustain by catering to the elitist customer. Post a controversial news/spicy photo/article and the no of hits to your sites multiply many times. Catering to people who want celebrities and other such news on page three is a thing on the past. Now such articles occupy their proud place on front page. The increase in no the hits or circulation once you publish something is definitely worth it, seems to be the consensus. Parveen talks about an incident reflecting this in his blog.

This is one issue I have told many people about...So here it goes again...

We had this Kamasutra sex survey a month ago, the results of which were published in many leading magazines.The Times of India had published them too, in the front pages of its supplement, The Hyderabad Times. The next day, a guy wrote a letter to the editor. I don't remember it verbatim, but I'll try...

"Sir, Nowadays we have been seeing that the Times is publishing more non-news items than news items...Many people in my organization are thinking of stopping the newspaper, since there are kids at home who read the same stuff...I don't think you should have published such stuff in the main pages...."

The reply from the editor was..
"Dear Reader, Thanks for your valuable opinion. May we suggest, our esteemed sister publication, "The Hindu"

The message being there is no moral dilemma what so ever. No wonder most of our class is circumspect about the media. We have learnt not to take things at face value.

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of USA and a co author of Declaration of Independence wrote in a private letter, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man". His opinion of newspapers was

" The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper."
" The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."

Anyways coming back to the issue the professor raised, I think increasing reporting reflects something else, that there is increasing awareness, that what was under the carpet is being talked about and rectified. That hence is a reason for hope, a step forward
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People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news. A. J. Liebling (1904 - 1963)